DISCLAIMER: Some of the information below deals with gaming the system/cheating. If you decide to use it the wrong way, keep in mind that actual penalties exist (and have been enforced) for cheating on ladders. I strongly advise that you don't use the information below to cheat on ladders and instead use it as a toolkit to recognize when your opponents may be cheating and report them.

There's probably a whole bunch this is missing. I'm hoping to build this thread into a link hub to all good strat guides, so I'd appreciate it if people could post links if they notice something I missed.

Step 0. Gather information.- Know all the game settings.(Rounding mode, kill rate, luck, move order, base income, cards, Armies per neutral territory(in-distribution) etc. have all influence on what you should pick.)- if possible, study games that your opponent did play with the same settings.(This will help you predicting what picks he might take)

Step 1. First Turn Bonusen.- look for all posible FTB's.(in Battle Islands V you can take FTB's of a 4 territory bonus with a double pick and a 5 territory bonus with a tripple pick*,in rare occasions it is not even a bad idee to take a pick in a bonus with a wasteland i it will enable you to take a +4 bonus in the 1e turn and another +4 bonus in the 2e turn that are not able to counter. your opponent will also not exect it, so even if you do not get your first 3 picks it can be a good counter pick.)- look if you can take a 2e bonus in turn 2.(if you can not take a 2e bonus, then the only reason for picking the FTB is to get a fast income if you know you can counter a bonus of your opponent in the first few turns.)- look if the FTB is easy to counter.(a FTB with a counter pick nearby can be risky, verry strong players sometime counter first turn bonusen by picking them as 3,4,5 and take the 6e pick also close to it, even if that bonus has a wasteland in it.)

*making triple picks has a bad reputation in strat ME, but in Battle Islands V is is more attractive to make tripple picks because of the Islands structures of the map.

Step 2. 2e turn bonusen.- Look if it is posible to take a +6 or a bonusen of +3 AND a bonus of +4 in 2 turns.(even if you have a good FTB option, it is not always the best option.If you have both options, then keep in mind that a +3&+4 bonus have 1 more income, but that on long term, a +6 bonus has the adventige.)- look if it is a safe 2 turn bonus/bonussen.(this can be the case because your opponent will not expect you will start there or you do not expect your opponent to start near or because it is easy to defend)- look to how you can expand afther the 2 turn bonus/bonusen.(look what bonusen you can take in turn 3, a +5 bonus at turn 3 would be ideal*, if you expect to see your opponent in turn 2 and be able to break him, then this is not importent.)

*This can mean that your 3e pick has to be next to on the the other 2 picks, but to choose a 3e pick close to the other 2 picks has not to be a bad thing, it can tell you that your opponent is not near or if you do not get the 3e pick you will know he did start close to you what is essentiol information.

Step 3. calculate/simulate the best picking options against each other.- calculate in your mind, on paper, or make a game with a alt to see what picking option would win this game.- choose your 4e, 5e and 6e pick very well thought out.(most time it is smart to choose your 4e,5e and 6e pick close to your 3e pick to counter it or to have a combo pick there.)- think of what picks would be best if you would know that your opponent would choose those 6e picks.(this is very important if you play against strong opponents)

Step 4. Final pick choice- Estimates the possible pick choice of the opponentThis is very important, because the best picks always depends or what your opponent will pick, and therefore you have to Estimates for every pick how big the chance is that your opponent will choose it.

Okay, added just about all the guides I could find in a Google search (and some discussions that had decent information). Let me know if you know about a guide that's not linked up there. Would be great to have something comprehensive to link people to.

Yeah, I'm tempted to- that's why I put an extra space between them and everything else. But they're still guides in a sense and at the very least give people an idea of how the ladders work plus enough information to realize when their opponents are gaming the ladders.

I'm torn here. On one hand, there's information in there that people could want + benefit from. On the other hand, they give people information on how to game the system to their advantage.

Unfortunately I'm not very aware of the rules. Just found out yesterday that you could actually get a warning for using the Report system if Fizzer doesn't think what you reported was worth reporting. Could someone clear up for me what sort of ladder behavior is cheating and what isn't?